Acta Forestalia Fennica vol. 63 | 1956

The investigation is based mainly on the material collected for Finnish rural labour force study in connection with the 1950 Population Census. A total of 44,667 men, aged 15-64, were interviewed in connection of the census, and a sub-group consisting of a sample of the forest and floating labour, 28,850 men, was formed for this study. Finnish rural population typically cultivates the land, tends cattle, works in the forest, builds roads and houses and floats timber without specializing in any of these jobs. The work done in the own farms is called unpaid work in this study in contrast to paid work outside the farm.

The paid forest and floating labour force (308,600 men) includes all forest and floating workers who reported that they have worked for a minimum of one day. Forest work is heavily winter-dominated. Only in the floating work there was a declining trend in the time series of 1933-1934 and 1942-1955. The average forest and floating labour input per man was small, 40-70 days depending on the occupational group. Only 13,000 workers worked over 200 days, and 32,000 worked 150 days. 44% of the paid forest and floating workers were members of families cultivating small farms, 26% had larger farms, and the remaining 30% were farmless or members of a family holding a building lot.

The main difficulty in finding manpower for summertime forest work seems not to be the lack of time for paid work because of the men’s unpaid work. They seem to prefer other, more attractive paid work.

The PDF includes a summary in English.

• Heikinheimo, E-mail: lh@mm.unknown
• Ristimäki, E-mail: tr@mm.unknown

In Finland the workers engaged in forestry and, in the rural districts, also in construction are seldom occupied with the work throughout the year or even for greater part of the year. Due to this, these industries seem disproportionally small in the statistics of census. The aim of this study was to gain figures that describe better the significance of these industries. Therefore, data was collected by replacing the man unit by a time unit, a day. The results are raised estimates of the activity by the men interviewed in 1950 Census of Finland, aged 15-64, living in rural communes.

In four areas of Finland, namely South-West Finland, Ostrobothnia, South Savo and Savo-Karelia, the male labour input to agriculture as a proportion of the total activity of the male labour was greater than in other parts of the country. In the western part of the country, the conditions of agriculture are favourable and the farms larger than in average in the country and the intensity of farming is greater. In South Savo and Savo-Karelia the conditions are poorer, consequently, the male labour input to agriculture per hectare under plough is greater than in the western areas.

In Finland, forest work is an occupation supplementary to work in agriculture, but the agriculture, based on predominantly small farms, is unable to utilize the entire work potential of the farming population. In Central and Eastern Finland, the forestry districts often coincide with the agricultural districts. In the coastal areas, where agriculture was relatively intense, the labour input to forestry remained small. The best forests are situated in Southern, Central and Eastern Finland, and the labour demand is, therefore, larger. Unemployment was heaviest in Southern Finland in certain densely populated districts with high proportion of urban occupations. It concerned mainly building workers, general labourers and harbour workers. In Northern Finland there was structural unemployment independent of business cycles.

The PDF includes a summary in English.

• Ristimäki, E-mail: tr@mm.unknown
• Väänänen, E-mail: sv@mm.unknown
• Heikinheimo, E-mail: lh@mm.unknown

The data on housing conditions presented in this study derives from the general population census of Finland of 1950. The sub-sample of professional forest workers was taken from the sample collected for the larger investigation of rural labour force. The housing density of professional forest workers was considerably higher than the average for the population in general. The total population of the country, according to the 1950 Census, showed a ratio of 154 persons to 100 rooms, while the average weighted with the number of rooms for forest workers was 237:100, and the unweighted 340:100. If three per room is taken as the limit of crowded housing, nearly half of the professional forest workers lived in crowded conditions. Over two-thirds of them owned their dwellings, and only 2% of them lived in dwellings owned by the employer. Three quarters of all the men belonged to the holder-family of small farms. About three quarters of them lived in dwellings of one or two rooms. Also, the size of the family and household affected the housing density. The housing density exceeds the average in the youngest age classes. This is probably because the sons of families with poor economic standing must start work young in forestry, and those families have a high housing density. A quarter of the families had electricity in their dwellings. Few had running water or sewage in their houses.

The PDF includes a summary in English.

• Väänänen, E-mail: sv@mm.unknown

The investigation into the manpower of small farms is a part of the 1950 rural labour force survey. The purpose of this work was to study the use of manpower of small farms, that have 0.25-0.499 ha under plough. The manpower of the farms refers to men of 15-64 years of age, members of the family, whose input of unpaid labour to farming was not less than 21 days in 1950. The aim was to find out the extent to which the labour input was to farming and to what extent to paid work outside the farm. The data was collected in connection to the census of Finland as a sample.

The men of small farms are primarily temporal workers in the different occupations. Their labour input in the own farms per hectare under plough increased as the size of the farms decreased. This seemingly contradictory result is due to a low decree of mechanization, the organization of work, the quality of the labour force and the great relative importance of maintenance work in small farms. Also, especially in the remote areas there is not available enough paid work for the men living in small farms. Farms in Lapland and the county of Oulu had most forest land, which increased the unpaid work on forestry. Forestry in small farms tends to require more unpaid work, because they use less hired labour and make less sales of standing timber.

This is the workforce in forest and construction industry, that are sensitive to business cycles, and draw additional manpower during boom of trends without affecting unemployment figures. Agricultural income of the men of small farms was estimated by comparing it with wages of a worker. Their income per day for unpaid labour was lower than the daily wage of a farm worker. High number of small farms is a result of agricultural policy in Finland. The aim has been to keep the proportion of agricultural population high since it is considered to be best able to provide work and a decent living. The farms, established in connection with the abolition of tenant farming and through colonization, were mostly small.

The PDF includes a summary in English.

• Ristimäki, E-mail: tr@mm.unknown

The study is a part of the investigation of the rural labour force in Finland in 1950. The data was collected in the form of a sample in connection with the census of Finland, and covers the rural male population of the age of 15-64. In this study the men in the age group of 15-19 are classified as youths and the 20-64 as adult men.

Youths in rural districts participated in production, calculated in man-days, to almost at the same extent as adult men. The total labour input of the youths was 78% of the total activity, and that of adult men 85%. About 75% of the men or their families owned a farm. The main activity, 151 days a year, of 47% of the youths and 51% of the adult men was in work on their own family farms. The input of paid labour of youths was smaller than that of adult men.

In rural districts 37% of the youths and 47% of the adult men spent the main part of the annual round of activity in paid work. However, in Lapland only quarter of the youths and half of the adult men was in paid work. Forest and agricultural work seem to have a greater meaning for youths, and construction of houses and industrial work for adult men. Only 12% of the youths and 13% of the men were employed principally as professional workers in forestry, agriculture or construction of houses. Jobs in industry, commerce, transport and communication had little significance.

About 36% of the youths had no permanent occupation. This figure includes, however, also those who were studying, or were at home at least for the greater part of the year. About 12% of the total activity of the youths was studying.

The PDF includes a summary in English.

• Ristimäki, E-mail: tr@mm.unknown

The article comprises some of the principal results of the labour force material collected in connection with the 1950 census of Finland. It includes the basic tables in which are listed the calculated estimates of total number of rural male forest and floating labour force, their labour input to agriculture, forestry and floating in 1950. In addition, division of the labour force into farmers and not-farmers and by districts are presented. The unemployment time and relief work input of the rural population was also calculated.

Finland’s economic situation in 1950 was characterized by a slow recovery from depression of the previous year. The situation had not yet improved in such measure that would have relieved appreciably the rural unemployment that arose from shortage of work available in the forest.

The PDF includes a summary in English.

• Heikinheimo, E-mail: lh@mm.unknown

In Finland the general shortage of labour during the Second World War called attention to employment problems in forestry. After the war the scope widened to include sociological and human maters. The Finnish Rural Labour Force Study deals with the whole rural labour force, not only forest work. Due to the scale of the subject, pilot studies were started by the Institute of Forest Economics at the University of Helsinki and the Central Statistical Office and the Board of Agriculture in 1950. This article describes in detail the methods used in the pilot studies the and main survey.

The aim of the survey was to obtain a reliable picture of three subjects. 1) The labour input of the male rural population during the observation year, its distribution and the seasonal fluctuations in the structure of labour input. 2) The unemployment time of the rural population, the periods underemployment and its seasonal variation. 3) The number of male workers engaged for a shorter or longer period during the year in certain occupation. The paper discusses the different data sources and ways to collect the data either from enterprises or workers. One of the obstacles is the large number of enterprises in agriculture and forestry. Consequently, the total number of people employed in a particular industry, its distribution and the duration of the working season can be estimated only from a sample selected from the population.

The data of the survey is based on a systematic sample, collected by interviews, of the annual round of activity in 1950 of 44,667 men of 15-64 years of age living in Finnish rural communes. The interviews were made in connection with the 1950 census of Finland. The results of the survey are presented in the other articles of Acta Forestalia Fennica issue 63.

The PDF includes a comprehensive summary in English.

• Heikinheimo, E-mail: lh@mm.unknown